


Delays

by fordisgay



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: M/M, Wedding Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 13:49:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9387905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fordisgay/pseuds/fordisgay
Summary: Stanford and Fiddleford never really thought about marriage when they were young men, due to impossibility. Now, though...





	

**Author's Note:**

> i posted this on tumblr a few days ago and i finally got around to revising it to post here. my baby gay heart is always so touched by news stories of old gay couples finally being able to get married (i usually start crying big manly tears let's be real), so i wanted to do that with my favorite gravity falls couple since these old nerds deserve it.

It never really occurred to Fiddleford and Stanford that marriage was a thing that was, potentially, within their grasp. Oh sure, they’d lived in San Francisco while at Backupsmore, they’d met other gay couples who had exchanged rings and the like. But marriage? Not even a blip on the radar for either of them. It wasn’t possible when they were young men and they both knew it without it being spoken, so they never bothered to think about anything beyond privately considering each other partners.

They’d grown closer over the past year of being in each other’s company again after decades apart, rekindled old feelings and just been happy to be near the other man. 2013 was a good year for sure, and Fiddleford had bonded with Ford’s niece and nephew more when they came back that summer.

There was a headline in May 2014 that made Ford go “huh, that’s interesting” before flipping through the weather and obituary sections like he did every Sunday morning. Fiddleford didn’t think much of it either, just absently said, “Well progress is always good”.

They didn’t think anything else of it until Mabel, now 14 going on 15, barreled into the shack a few weeks later at the start of June, excited to see her Grunkles and Mr McGucket and all her friends, and then she made the most overjoyed face at Ford and Fiddleford and asked, “So when’s the wedding??”

“Wedding?” Ford raised his eyebrows in confusion.

“Who’s gettin’ married?” Fiddleford inquired.

“You guys!! When’s the date? Is it this summer?? If it’s later in the year you _have_ to tell me so I can fake sick and skip school to come up and be here!”

Huh. Well, they certainly hadn’t thought about it at all. Stan eyes them, confused and intrigued. Ford hates to disappoint his niece, but truthfulness is a virtue she tries to instill in him and Stan often, so he tells her there is no wedding. He tries not to feel guilty about how let down Mabel looks, but really, a wedding? Between him and Fiddleford? It sounds like the setup of a very bad joke. Marriage isn’t for the two of them. It didn’t exist for them back when they were young men, and so there’s no point in thinking about it now a law has suddenly changed. Besides, it’ll probably get switched back to being banned again in a few months anyway—it’s just the way things work. No point in wasting time thinking about it.

... Except, well, it isn’t such a _terrible_  thing to consider. They _are_ old men and it does seem a little fruitless, but... well, they _are_  old men. They wonder to themselves what it’d be like to be married to one another. Officially together in the eyes of... well, everyone besides close family. It was a pipe dream they barely thought over in their younger years, but now... now things seem different. It’s not good by any means, there’s still violence galore and they don’t exactly feel safe or comfortable showing any kind of hint of affection in public. But it’s… better? Maybe.

They find themselves alone one night (Pacifica had gone “out”, which they knew was code for a little date with Mabel, and they both found themselves secretly giddy about it simply because the two girls found it safe enough to do something like that), enjoying the rich velvet upholstered furniture in the previously-Northwest Manor and the fact that Ford learned how to mix even better drinks when he was in the gambling dimension because, well, casinos have both high stakes betting and fantastic alcohol. So they talk, hypothetically of course. Which last name would they use, or would it be a hyphenating situation? Ford would prefer to keep his surname due to it being on all his PhDs, most of which were obtained in other dimensions so changing the name in the books would be nigh impossible (technically... very technically...).

They both agree gold rings are quite nice, nothing too ostentatious but still a “statement” so to speak. Ford would prefer to observe Jewish customs when it comes to the ceremony itself “though I could do without the hora quite frankly—I’m not a fan of laying my life and balance into the hands of a bunch of drunks” which makes Fiddleford laugh, though on the serious side he agrees so long as Ford is willing to remind him how it all works since Fidds’s memory still gets cloudy and of course, since he isn’t Jewish himself. Fiddleford admits his slight self-consciousness since, while he’s taken to “dressin like a normal human and all”, he hasn’t worn a suit in decades, and Ford replies with a “nonsense, you’ve always cleaned up handsomely”.

It dawns on them after an hour or two of these hypotheticals that this has turned into a serious consideration, and their eyes meet at once and they smile a little nervously.

“Should we?”

“Don’t see why not, we’ve already got the whole thing planned out anyway.”

“We don’t have any rings for a traditional proposal...”

“No, but we’ve got lotsa alcohol!”

“Works much better, in my opinion”.

They clink glasses and drink then, resolving to tell Mabel in the morning because they know she’ll be a little put out if the news to her is at all delayed, and a single night’s length is bad enough.

Ford gets cold feet almost immediately when it comes to trying to find someone to officiate. He’s afraid, he confesses, because he hasn’t been to temple in decades and he doesn’t know any rabbis here in Oregon and then he wonders if a rabbi would even be _willing_  to get near them because they’re gay and-

Well. The panic sets in, and it’s looking more doom and gloom by the minute, and Mabel is crushed because “Grunkle Ford and Grunkle McGucket’s wedding wont even get to _happen_?? Can’t we just kidnap a rabbi????” And then Stan walks in and sees the depression in the atmosphere of the room and asks what’s wrong, and they tell him and huzzah! Stan Pines, town darlin’ and Mr. Mystery, comes to the rescue!

“I didn’t know you had the license to officiate weddings.”

“I can also help name ankle-biters and sign off on funerals. Wait, Mabel didn’t show you the photo of me doing Gomper’s and Waddles’s wedding? It was... uh... fuckin weird, not gonna lie.”

“Huh, Stanford, the dang pig and goat got married before we did! Good for them!”

“... Gompers and Waddles are both male, yes?”

“Yes, Sixer, they’re both male. Gay interspecies marriage is all the rage, keep up.”

“... You’re pulling my leg.”

“Holy shit, did the other dimensions fry your sarcasm meter or somethin?”

“Oh shut up.”

So they’re certainly at an advantage now with Stan officiating the marriage. Fiddleford begins to wonder how it works religiously, and Stan waves him off, assuring him “ya marry each other, you don’t marry the rabbi or nothin. I’m just there to make sure you don’t make weird faces at each other in silence for an hour”.

Of course, Ford goes to his favorite (only, but still favorite) nephew for advice throughout the planning process. Dipper is a “whiz”, as Ford puts it, with the internet and shopping online, because while Ford isn’t bad at all with computers, it still overwhelms him to sift through all the search results. He also complains aloud to Dipper about suit shopping. “I forgot how much i despise formal occasions. It’s madness! All the required garments, so stiff and scratchy... I don’t know what to do, my boy, I really don’t.” Dipper comes to the rescue on that end by helping Ford find softer shirts and pants and a jacket, that way it’s not sensory hell for his uncle since he’ll be in the suit for several hours.

“It’s a big deal, Great Uncle Ford, there’s no reason to be miserable.”

“You are incredibly wise for your age.”

“Oh uh... thanks.” And Dipper swallows a screech of pure joy because getting complimented by his #1 hero never gets old. Never.

“So who all are you dudes inviting?” Soos, ever the pragmatic one, manages to remind everyone with a simple comment because _holy shit we forgot a guest list_  and it’s right back to Panictown because they’re l i t e r a l l y not out to anyone besides the people who already know about the wedding. Fiddleford nervously contacts his son, who he’s been on much better terms with the past several months, and Tate is happy for his dad, so that’s a weight off Fidds’s shoulders.

He doesn’t really have anyone else, since he hasn’t been in touch with his siblings in so long and he’s embarrassed of himself and all the years he spent being the “village idiot” and “local nutjob” so he doesn’t think he can contact them. Ford understands of course, and besides, Pacifica makes up for it being his adopted daughter who’s been quite enthusiastic about making the wedding classy (and a little less pink and purple because Mabel got a little out of control with the color scheme), which is her own way of showing affection to Fiddleford and he’s real touched by it.

Ford has a lot more family, because the Pines clan is strong and spread far and wide. It’s awkward. Extremely so. He doesn’t want to discredit Mabel and Dipper’s parents, nor his older brother Shermie, but he can’t imagine they’d want to come to his wedding, of all occasions... let alone know he’s gay, and it makes him worry they might not allow Mabel and Dipper to be around him anymore, and that thought hurts him more than he cares to admit. Stan surprises him with the news that Shermie, his wife, and the kids’ parents are already planning to come up for the wedding, much to Ford’s shock.

“I knew you wouldn’t call ‘em, Sixer. Figured I’d take care of it, make it easier on everybody. No one can resist my charms.”

“So that’s what you call it.”

“Oh fuck off.”

It comes down to Stan sitting Ford in the armchair, arms on either side of him to trap Ford in, and shoving the landline into his hands, the phone already ringing to their mother in the nursing home in Oakland. “It’s now or never,” Stan insists, and leaves him alone, having cleared everyone out of the vicinity to give Ford some much-needed privacy. His throat almost closes up as he tries to talk to his mother. They’ve visited her several times, of course, but this is so much different, so much worse, he’d never intended to tell her this. He figured she’d die happy and thinking he was a normal bachelor and not... well, as some would say, a “degenerate”.

His phrasing is awkward and meandering, Ma telling him to spit it out and quit prefacing because right, of course, she’s never been very patient when he gets caught in leading up to whatever needs to be said. So he tells her, and then it’s quiet.

She hung up, then. It hurts him much more than he expected it to. Pushing 70 years old and he’d thought he could handle this but... losing Mom’s love permanently wasn’t something he could have ever prepared for and it hurts. It hurts so much, his chest is squeezing almost painfully and tears prick at his eyes and he wishes he could take back what he said and-

“Stanford, you better not have hung up on your mother, you should know better than that.”

Ma invites herself to the wedding before he fully gets out the news, insisting on being there because she wanted to see at least one of her twin boys get married before she kicked the bucket (“Your brother’s marriage to that nasty broad for a few hours doesn’t count!”). And he’s beyond relieved and once they say their goodbyes, Stan pokes his head in to ask how it went and he doesn’t mean to let the tears slip out but they do, and Stan ruffles his hair out of place which is irritating but then his brother hugs him and it’s alright, it’s alright, it went fine, it’s okay.

Somehow more and more members of the Pines family get invited by word of mouth, and Ford isn’t particularly upset--in his eyes, it’s practical and will help make it seem less bare due to lack of people from Fiddleford’s family, and, well, you can’t have a proper Jewish wedding without a lot of people to party their asses off, now can you? Stan is put in charge of managing all the guests, which of course he takes to like a fish to water because it means he gets to play god and make people do whatever he says.

The day of the wedding arrives, and Stan joins Ford in the morning as they button shirts and knot their ties and pin yarmulkes to their heads. Not hard to get ready when both grooms are wearing suits, really.

“You nervous?”

“Why should I be? He and I have known each other for years. This is really just a grandiose announcement to everyone else. We don’t need to confirm it to ourselves.”

“Heh, guess that’s true.”

“Weddings are for other people anyway, not the actual couple.”

“Reminds me of when I married my ex-wife. She invited all these damn people and they were way more excited than I ever was.”

“That’s likely due to the fact she is your _ex_ -wife.”

“You got that right. We got divorced real fast cause I drove her crazy.”

“Why am I not surprised.”

“Hey shut up, I’m a delight to be around!”

“Since when?”

Since Fiddleford’s mother passed, she wasn’t able to attend, so Mabel and Dipper are the ones to break the plate to show the seriousness of the commitment. Dipper drops it to initially shatter it and steps back to let his sister maniacally stomp on it, the girl grinning from ear to ear the whole time. She also complains a little to her parents, because “Why don’t we do more Jewish stuff, this is tons of fun!!” since, well, Mabel loves to break things.

Ford belatedly realizes he lacks a kittel, and hastily throws on his white lab coat as a substitute before Stan comes to drag him out to the canopy. Stan yells at everyone to sit down and shut up, because it’s Stan and really what else can one expect from him. Then he breaks out the two wine glasses, filling up one (Fiddleford tells him to keep pouring... keep going... keep going... keep going... keep going... because he and Ford need a stiff drink being around so many damn people).

Stan pulls out a notepad with the modified blessings written down, though he keeps having to stop and squint at the words because his handwriting is terrible, and “Is that... ne... ness... what the fuck did I even write down...” and Ford leans over to examine the wording and mutter the guess as to what Stan meant and also say “Stanley, your writing is atrocious”.

“Anyway, thank you, God, for sanctifying this marriage, yada yada yada, okay drink from this cup so we can move on.”

Fiddleford and Stanford place the rings on each other’s fingers, gold like they’d discussed, and then Stan pats around in his suit jacket for the marriage contract, delayed in remembering where he’d put it, and leans down to get it from where it was tied to Waddles’s neck, the pig giving a happy oink when stan bothers to scratch him on the ear before standing up again. The contract is a Mabel design, made from dedication and tears and sweat and glitter and pastel markers and lovingly bezazzled to finish it off. Of course, Stan ruins the moment a little by loudly exclaiming “Oh, fuck me!!” when he remembers the contract is written in Aramaic, which he doesn’t know how to read at all. Fiddleford and Ford can’t help but start laughing, while Stan grumbles “How the fuck am I supposed to know how to read this? I’m not a rabbi!”

Finally, Stan just huffs and gives up, handing the contract out to one of the grooms to take and tuck in their jacket and announcing, “Okay the marriage is still official and gonna go on cause I said so, and I’m in charge here, so don’t question it.” Then he pours another glass of wine and Stanley, being Stanley, starts his own version of the seven blessings, because in his own words: “I was too lazy to look up what I’m supposed to say, so here we go.” (Ford at this point is pinching the bridge of his nose and Fiddleford is trying in vain not to laugh) “Thanks to the supposed god above for giving us wine cause it’s really fantastic. Uh... thanks also this supposed god for bringing my brother and McGucket together cause they seem pretty nuts about each other and I’m glad my brother has some happiness outside of our niece putting stickers on his face. A sarcastic thanks to God for giving me this stupid goat that eats everything he wants because he keeps chewing up my clothes-

“Ow! Dammit, Sixer! Okay, okay. Uh… thanks, God, for being the number one MVP and making it so I won the football bowl- Ow, goddammit!” (Ford had elbowed Stan previously and has now boxed him across the ear) “Thanks, God, also for keeping Mom alive long enough to see Ford get married, she’s still kickin’ it even in her 90s. Thanks to God also for bringing my brother back. I was... without him for so many years, and I’m… actually thankful I get to make up for lost time now.” Stan clears his throat, pretending he didn’t start choking up. “Anyway, and uh, thank God for Fiddlenerd cause he makes my brother happy and he’s saved our asses a bunch of times, so I appreciate that. Anyway! Enough sappiness, have a drink, lovebirds!”

The glasses are set down then and Ford and Fiddleford each stomp on one, though Fidds gets a little jumpscared by everyone suddenly yelling “mazel tov!”, in addition to Waddles squealing happily on cue behind them.

They don’t remember much of the party after, only that for once Stan did not lie about free pizza at the Shack. Someone did talk Ford into participating in the hora (rumor has it that it was less “talking” and more, Stan shoved Ford onto a chair and everyone ganged up on the poor guy to lift him high in the air, but he was drunk by then so he didn’t seem as miffed by it as he would’ve been sober). Dipper and Mabel both tried to sip some wine but gagged almost in unison because holy shit it’s bad it’s gross ew ew ahhhh. Ma pines kisses her middle son’s cheek during the night, cooing about how happy she is for Ford, which makes him feel like he’s floating on a cloud for the rest of the party, because after all the years he’d been afraid to out himself to her, she’s now at his wedding, and it’s okay, everything is okay.

It’s more than okay, it’s wonderful. The first time they kiss in public is at the after-party, both more than drunk enough by then to not care as much and feeling safe enough for the first time, despite the number of people.

When all is said and done, the party long over and the both of them worn out as they sit on the porch, they watch the twinkling stars overhead, Ford absentmindedly twisting the ring on his finger. It’ll take some getting used to--he’s not used to having jewelry on his hands and hasn’t worn it anywhere else since the late 70s, which was when he lost his star of David to those blasted evil gnomes—it was an old Chanukah gift Fidds had bought him, and he hasn’t really forgiven the gnomes for that.  
They glance over at each other, smiling tiredly, and glance around to make sure no eyes are watching before sharing another kiss. Never would they have though marriage could be a possibility for them (and really, they’d come to accept it as younger men and chosen to focus on more positive things instead of being denied it), but after all the hectic crowding day they’d had... it really was a nice thought. To be married officially in the eyes of everyone (well, everyone in Oregon).

(And it’s especially nice when 2015 rolls around and their marriage is now recognized across the country.)

For now, they let themselves have quiet affection for one another, nobody around to watch or degrade them like so many times in the past.

Well, no one to watch, except for Steve the forest giant, and Jeff and Schmebuloch and the other gnomes, and the Multibear, and Chutzpar, and a handful of pixies, all safely hidden behind the bushes and treeline. Dare they say, they’re happy too, even if the author and his assistant have always been rather obnoxious as they tromped through the Gravity Falls forest.

Mabel and Dipper pretend they aren’t looking at their uncle and newest uncle either through the window. They turn away to give them privacy, of course, but it’s… warming, if a word could describe it, to see their uncles so happy, and so in “loOOOOooooOOOoooOOoovveee” as Mabel puts it. and she’s not at all smug about the fact she was the one to put the idea of a wedding in their heads, either. Not at all, as she grins and turns to go back upstairs, a spring in her step and ideas already in her head for matching holiday sweaters for her two newlywed uncles.


End file.
